MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

2020-22

Term – IV
2021-2022

Consumer Behavior

Course Instructor

Prof. Prantosh Banerjee

Reading Summary

Submitted by: Group 10

Section: B

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT UDAIPUR

 Summary: Consumer Attitude Formation and Change

An attitude is a learned predisposition to behave in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way

with respect to a given object (e.g., a product category, a brand, a service, an advertisement, a
Web site, or a retail establishment).
The tricomponent attitude model, multi-attribute attitude models, trying-to-consume attitude
model, and attitude-toward-the-ad model are four main kinds of attitude models that have
garnered attention.
There are three aspects to the tricomponent model of attitudes: a cognitive component, an
affective component, and a conative component. The cognitive component captures a customer's
product and service knowledge and views (i.e., beliefs). The affective component is concerned
with a customer's emotions or feelings in relation to a specific product or service. The affective
component is evaluative in nature, determining an individual's total evaluation of the attitude
object in terms of some form of favorableness rating. The conative component is concerned with
the likelihood of a consumer acting in a certain way in relation to the attitude object. The
conative component is typically interpreted as a statement of the customer's intent to purchase.
Consumer researchers have paid a lot of attention to multiattribute attitude models (such as
attitude-toward-object, attitude-toward-behavior, and theory-of-reasoned-action models). These
models look at consumer perceptions of specific product features as a whole (e.g., product or
brand features or benefits).
There has been an effort to better meet the goals of consumers as reflected by their “trying to
consume” behaviour (i.e., a goal the consumer is trying or planning to accomplish). The theory
of trying is intended to account for the numerous situations in which the action or result is
uncertain. The influence of commercials on consumer attitudes about a brand is investigated
using attitude toward-the-ad models.
These same factors drive attitude transformation; that is, attitudes are learnt and impacted by
personal experiences as well as knowledge obtained from numerous personal and impersonal
sources. Acceptance and the speed with which attitudes are likely to change are both influenced
by the consumer's personality.
The theory-of-reasoned-action represents a comprehensive integration of attitude components
into a structure that is designed to lead to both better explanation and better predictions of
behavior.
The theory of trying-to-consume is designed to account for the cases where the action or
outcome is not certain but reflects the consumer’s efforts to consume.
As the attitude-toward-the-ad model depicts, the consumer forms various feelings (affects) and
judgments (cognitions) as the result of exposure to an ad.
Making specific demands obvious is an effective method for shifting consumer sentiments
toward a product or brand. The utilitarian function, the ego-defensive function, the value-
expressive function, and the knowledge function are four functions that can be characterised
using the functional approach.
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) takes a broader view of how two separate persuasive
paths can affect people's minds. When a consumer's motivation or ability to appraise the attitude
object is high, the central route is particularly significant to attitude change; that is, attitude
change occurs because the consumer actively searches out information related to the attitude
object itself.
Discomfort or dissonance happens when a customer has conflicting thoughts regarding a belief
or an attitude object, according to cognitive dissonance theory.
After the purchase, there is postpurchase dissonance:
a) Purchasing decisions frequently necessitate compromise.
b) It's quite normal to experience post-purchase dissonance.
c) Dissonance causes customers to feel unhappy about their previous beliefs or conduct, which
they try to alleviate by modifying their attitudes to match their behaviour.
d) A change in attitude is typically the result of an action or conduct.
Attribution theory attempts to explain how people assign causality to events on the basis of either
their own behavior or the behavior of others.
Individuals' inferences or judgments about the source of their own action are addressed in self-
perception theory.
Defensive attribution—consumers are more likely to take personal credit for achievement while
attributing loss to others or external circumstances.
The foot-in-the-door strategy is based on the idea that people look at their previous behaviour
(for example, compliance with a little request) and conclude that they are the type of person who
says “Yes” to such requests (i.e., an internal attribution).